Harvard

Most people probably don't think of a coating of paint as being a particularly major component of a manufactured item. If the object is quite large, however, or if a lot of them are being made, paint can add considerably to its weight and/or production costs. With that in mind, researchers from Harvard University's Laboratory for Integrated Science and Engineering have created a new lightweight, low-cost coloring technology for both rough and smooth surfaces.
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Researchers at Harvard University say they have identified two chemical compounds that could replace "bad" fat cells in the human body with healthy fat-burning cells, in what may be the first step toward the development of an effective medical treatment – which could even take the form of a pill – to help control weight gain.
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Scientists have had some success activating the body's immune system to take the fight to cancer and other diseases, a process known as immunotherapy. Now, a new method developed by researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University could advance this form of treatment even further. The technique involves the injection of biomaterials that assemble into 3D scaffolds inside the body to accommodate huge amounts of immune cells, a process that could trigger an attack on deadly infections ranging from HIV to cancer to Ebola.
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Falls are the leading cause of death by injury amongst seniors, and those falls are in turn typically caused by poor balance or an irregular gait. Taking things back yet another step, problems with balance and gait are often caused by diminished sensation in the feet. Now, however, a new study indicates that subtly-buzzing insoles may help seniors regain some of that lost sensation, and thus be less likely to fall down.
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When it comes to new tumor-fighting treatments, it’s often as much about location, location, location as it is the actual drug interaction. Cytoxin-producing stem cells produced by scientists at Harvard University lodge at the site of brain tumor removal to continually attack remaining tumor cells. As an alternative to drug treatments that can be invasive or ineffective, the researchers saw promising results against glioblastomas, which hold the dubious distinction of being the most common and most fatal brain cancer.
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There may be new hope for people who have lost some of their hearing due to exposure to loud noises, or simply due to aging. Scientists from the University of Michigan and Harvard University have restored hearing in mice, by getting them to create more of a protein within their ears.
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Astronomers looking for exoplanets are using a fine-toothed comb – a fine-toothed astro-comb, to be precise. And just to make sure it works, the first planet they’ll be looking for is Venus. Developed by astronomers Chih-Hao Li and David Phillips of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the astro-comb uses a new spectroscopic device installed in the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo in the Canary Islands that will detect the beclouded planet by its gravitational effect on the Sun as a test of a potentially valuable tool in the hunt for Earth-like planets beyond our Solar System.
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Our bodies have evolved to be pretty good at dealing with incursions by foreign objects and bacteria. Usually, that's a positive thing, but it can spell trouble for medical devices, such as replacement joints, cardiac implants and dialysis machines, which increase the risk of blood clots and bacterial infection. Now researchers at Harvard University have developed a surface coating that smooths the way for medical devices to do their job inside the human body.
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Stem cell researchers at Harvard University have devised a method for creating large quantities of human insulin-producing beta cells, which could soon lead to a cure for type 1 diabetes as well as a new treatment for type 2 diabetes. The cells are currently being trialled in animals and non-human primates with hopes human trials could take place in the near future..
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When a person's skin is burnt or otherwise injured, part of the body's healing process involves boosting oxygen levels in the damaged tissue. If doctors treating such injuries know how high those levels are, then they can determine how quickly and thoroughly the skin is healing. In order to help them obtain that information without having to remove the wound dressing, an international team of scientists has created a glowing paint-on bandage.
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